Your Right to Know

UNITED NATIONS — The top U.N. advocate for children afflicted by war said yesterday that the
Islamic State was using them as informers, checkpoint sentries and, in some cases, suicide
bombers.

Leila Zerrougui, the special representative of the secretary general for children and armed
conflict, also said that the United Nations had received reports that the Islamic State had
abducted girls from minority communities and forced them into marriage, but that it had been unable
to verify those reports.

Zerrougui made the assertions at a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on
the Islamic State’s actions in Iraq. The group, which has proclaimed a strict Sunni Islamic state
that spans the Syria-Iraq border, has imposed severe rules on behavior and has been accused of a
litany of brutalities against non-Sunni groups, including mass executions.

Flavia Pansieri, the U.N. deputy high commissioner for human rights, told the Human Rights
Council that the Islamic State had ordered strict rules for women living in the northern Iraqi city
of Mosul and other areas in its control.

“Women are not allowed to walk in the street without the presence of a male guardian, and there
are more and more reports of women being beaten” for infractions, she said.

Pansieri also spoke of targeted killings, including what she described as the July 10 executions
of 650 prisoners in Mosul. Those who claimed they were Sunni were taken away, while Shiites and
others were forced into ditches and shot.